It was Awesome!

Race to the Top from Amanda Willoughby on Vimeo.

Stuff I need for my Installation
2 - light outlets
1 - laptop with isadora
1 - table
2 - extension cords
1- projector
1- microphone
1 - Amp for microphone and music
3 - chairs

Sick today

Unfortuneately I have been very sick for the past three days and wont be in class today. Be back soon...

Press release

Come join us on the front lawn of Memphis College of Art, on May 5th, for a gaming night to remember. Amanda Willoughby presents Race to the Top, a video game that employs the MCA building as your game board. Bring your friends and feel like a kid again as you compete for tasty prizes!

Concept for final- Race to the top

A video game projected onto the left front face of Rust Hall
Race to the Top

inspiriation

"Race to the Top"
The main thing That I remember about playing games as a child was the competitive side of the whole thing and that's why this game is a race. I want to remind the players of the feeling of playing a videogame as a child: old school sounds and pixelized imagery. I chose the front of the school as my location because it already has a grid and it reminded me of the old pacman game, and a lot of the old games were based on a grid. I want to use a game controller for the controls, so I'm thinking isadora will be what I'll use.

Rules
your player must touch each one of the columns on your side. (that keeps players from jumping
First one to the top wins.

Alternative Video Projection Ideas

Carsten Nicolai 'Fades' (2006) Installation in lightproof auditorium, video projection (16:9 ratio), mist, sound
the projected light hitting the mist particles create a light sculpture in three dimensional space.

Primal Source (2008) is an outdoor interactive/performance installation. The piece is projected onto a large water/mist screen and responds to the sound waves produced by the audience.


projecting onto a building.

this one is really cool! it's like a giant tablet that you use your feet to control!

Powerhouse Show - A quick statement

Triggered
Experience Memphis streets like never before! This Triggered show is all about movement. Take hold of the mouse to manipulate what you see. Working with the concept of movement and disorientation, I’ve layered video footage that the audience can manipulate. I want viewers to take a different look at something that they typically see on a daily basis. Roads, lights, and architecture make for the perfect tools to trigger this experimental show.

Here are my simple instructions

Isadora Practice

This program is pretty easy once you get the hang of it. I like it. So far i've just played around with it and tried some tricks from the first two or three tutorials. I really like the way this program works and im really excited to see what else can be done.




The tutorials were very helpful

A Friend (with audio)

it's a quick rough cut of the audio. i didn't have time to take it into logic and do my magic so here it is! I think its working

Frame By Frame Project Self Critique

1. A Friend
2. The main idea that I started with was a paper man's adventure trying to get around in a 3D world. The character originally, was going to be rigged for his arms, legs and head to animate as he moved; but that idea would have taken away from the fact that the character is paperHe would have been trying to do normal things that just don't work out because he's paper. Eventually, he finds himself in a safe and happy spot with a paper girl that he is happy with. After some critique, the idea moved into this character's journey to find a friend.
3. This idea came initially from my wanting to work with paper. From there, i developed the character and then thought about where i would take him. I have been doing a lot of work on my internship dealing with friendship and think that's where this idea subconsciously popped up. On top of that, much of the concepts i have been recently been working on deal with relationships between people and this is sort of a branch off from that.
4. I want the audience of this piece to have some kind of empathy for this little guy as he moves on, and want him to eventually find a friend. This piece is also meant to be humorous for every time that the paper man is rejected by potential friends.
5. The theme of this piece is about not giving up until one find's what one wants.
6. I almost had a heart attack this morning when the server was all jacked up and i thought my project was deleted, but everything on that end is pretty much worked out. I had a lot of issues with my camera placement and keeping it still. I bought a pretty good short tripod, but when it came to working on the floor things got a little difficult. overall i think its a solid starting piece but there are many improvements that can be made. first of all the frame rate for some sections progresses too fast and its kinda confusing for the viewer. I'm also not completely sold on the title for myself. I usually have issues naming things because i don't want to make them too weird or too obvious. Another area that i'd like to work on is the part where the barbies are... it progresses way too fast and it looks confusing. I had a lot of fun working on this project though.

Exhibition Opportunities
The Circus Cell Animation Film Festival

Fuck Yeah Stop Motion

The Atlanta Film Festival

Sun Valley Film Festival

Work in Progress

Initially i had a huge fail because i used a terrible camera. So I went back to the drawing board with a different camera and it worked really well and I had a lot of fun using the rig in the mini-lab. I really want to make one of those for myself. I made some changes to my project. At this point, I've decided to take my character's original journey and shorten it just a bit. After the character has come to life he goes and tries to find friends. I've decided not to take him outside because there was nothing out there that seemed to fit in with the story. but anyways, I'm about halfway there. I have 4 clips ranging from about 8-10 seconds. The files are really huge so playback with them is really hard to see. My next step is running the clips that I have through after effects to resize the project and focus my camera into closer spots. I have more to shoot but not too much. The video above is after i took the shots through after effects. This project is turning out to become quite lengthy.

Homework

Tuesday February 7th - have ending storyboarded
animate beginning. (color fill in and peel off page)
test shots of movement through 3D space.

Thursday Feb 8th - Animate further

Storyboard

Practice

Well, I wish I would have spoken to someone about working with the web camera. I worked for a really long time on a piece. Had a few hundred frames done... then I tried to save the projects... and that's where things went wrong. All my work was deleted because the program crashed. I did several other 2 to 3 second animations, but only a few of them exported. Frame by Frame crashed a lot! I also had issues with the camera not focusing for a long time. I had to restart the program a few times to get the camera back to normal. This was a very frustrating ordeal I think I may want to stick to using my own equipment for this project.




I know the clips in the video seem really random. This is just a compilation of the few clips that I got to export. I'm really disappointed that I didn't get more to show. But at least now I know what not to do.

after playing with all that nice stuff jill showed today in class, Im extra excited about getting started on this first project. the frame by frame program will make this project much easier too. Im still wanting to do the project below (I can actually get it done this weekend). For the first half of it, i going to work in the mini-lab. The rest will be shot in various locations. The first thing now is storyboarding, im really wanting this project to be a nice piece to add to my portfolio.

Rounding out my Idea

So i've decided to combine 2 of my ideas. The piece would start as a 2D animation:
a small boy is bored and alone on a page and wants to leave his small 2 Dimensional space . using the technique of erasing and adding i will animate the figure. the figure then rips himself off of the page and proceeds to explore. Using only stop motion and cut paper for the figure, he goes through several environments that are huge to him. After a long day of being damaged by the elements of the world, the boy happily goes back to his page.

A 2D figure wants to thrive in a 3-Dimensional world, but finds out that life is harder than he imagined.

New Ideas! TOYS!

So, i was fishing around on the internet looking at different types of optical toys and I got some cool ideas. im wanting to do more with my hands now.

1. I was looking at a toy called "Changable charlie" this toy is a set of blocks, that when arranged, form a face. Each block has six different sides that will slightly change the face of the character. I was thinking of making my own toy this kind and making a stop motion video depicting the changing image.

I found this video that shows how to make something similar.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xlVUG8qrWM&feature=related
2.Strobotop


3. Retroscope


4. Jacob's ladder
The Jacob's Ladder is a very old optical toy. It consists of a series of blocks held together by ribbons. When the topmost block is turned, the blocks appear to cascade down the strings. This would be a really cool toy to make in class and it wouldn't take too long. Each side would have a different picture on it that changes as the ladder is tilted.


this video shows how to make one out of paper.

One Frame at a time

1. My first idea is an animated drawing. Every part of it would be done by hand. I'd do it by hand with pencil, erasing and adding as i animate with single images. The content would be a transforming figure moving throughout a space.


2. Cut Paper Stop Motion
This video gave me the idea to hand draw backgrounds on paper and animate paper characters on top of it. I would make my characters with paper (similar to the way i would make them in photoshop for importing into after effects). Each body part would be cut out separately for animation. Facial expressions would be drawn by hand (or i'd make individual mouth cut outs) and would look like replacement animation. I'm leaning on this idea mostly, it's just something that I really want to try. I'd have a character in an outside setting interacting with a tree trying to knock off fruit.



3. Flip Book
A printed flip book with the character actions done in photoshop. This would be a very colorful flip book as opposed to the traditional line drawings. I'd use this bear character that I made last semester in photoshop. Its a story of a friendly bear trying to make friends.